If You Should Die Before I Wake
by Mystic25
Summary: Another aftermath of AJBAC and post DT..but maybe, a little sadder, a little more real. (well except for no Virus, but Alec included)


"If I Should Die Before You Wake"  
Mystic25 (yellowrubberduck31@hotmail.com)  
  
SUMMARY: Another aftermath of AJBAC and post DT..but maybe, a little sadder, a little more real. (well except for no Virus, but Alec included)  
  
A/N: This all came about after remembering that line from the prayer kids say "Now I lay me down to sleep.." It got me thinking of Zack after he "died" in AJBAC. It was sad when I watched it, I almost cried..I wanted to explore Max's pain after she got out. This is AU, her and Logan will have their "reuion moment" but Max lost her brother too, all that emotion has to go somewhere. If you cry easy, this is a tissue alert.  
  
*****   
  
SEATTLE  
  
She had been running for hours, days, she didn't know. So close to, somewhere, maybe home. Her heart beat in her chest, but each time it did it reminded her, it wasn't hers. Wasn't her heart to beat.  
  
/FLASH: "So strong, the heart of a matyr.."/  
  
/Bitch! Fuckin' bitch!/ Her lungs felt like they would explode, but she ignored it. She was Manticore after all. She heard him behind her, he had been following her all this time. She knew it, but she didn't care. She was a soldier, she knew the value of keeping her eyes on the prize. And keeping the demons from eating her soul, for now. Until dark time came, when she was left alone with her haunts and her memories of Zack, a man she would only be able to touch in dreams now, nightmares.  
  
Thump. Thump. Thump.   
  
The heart was beating, but her soul, her essence was on fire. "Alec" was still behind her, but like she gave a flying fuck about him. Let him find her; let him kill her if he wanted, but not yet dammit. The objective was up ahead. Something she finally had control over for the first time in three months.  
  
*****   
  
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.  
  
The beats were coming faster, rapid fire. Exhaustion, she knew the signs. But she kept on, adrenaline didn't know the signs of exhaustion, it defied them.  
  
She ran, her muscles straining and the heart, HIS heart burning a hole through her rib cage.  
  
****   
  
THUMP THUMP THUMP  
  
It was the only sound she heard now, pounding in her ears like tribal drums. Her energy was almost gone, spent down to the wire. Sweat rolled off her like a marathon runner, a runner for her life, her freedom, her escape.  
  
It was beating too fast now. She feared the darkness calling for her. She didn't want to be alone in it, not yet. Who would save her from her memories then? Not Zack, not her beloved brother, he was gone..  
  
/Oh Zack, why? I told you before to never sacrifice yourself for me. You went AWOL forever big brother. I can't reach you up there../  
  
Her hands, sweaty as they were picked the lock to familiar digs. The door barely creaked. She entered silently. Her eyes were unfocused, fuzzy vision. /Not now, not here..I want to see. I want to see him. I already lost the first man I ever loved, please let me see this one DAMMIT!/ She rubbed them furiously, or so she thought. She was dizzy now. Her muscles were declaring their protest, telling her they hated her for abusing them all this time.  
  
She held off passing out. She couldn't do it now. She searched for his eyes. Blue in the blackness. Blue in the darkness.  
  
Finally they came, paired with a priceless expression of shock and bewilderment, and her name. "Max.."  
  
She heard him approach her, soon he was touching her. She knew he wanted to kiss her. She was transgenic, that's the very least she was capable of knowing. She wanted to kiss him back, she wanted to but she couldn't..  
  
She never got to tell Zack he was loved by someone. She never got to tell Logan that either, or even say good-bye and that it wasn't fair, she didn't want to die. And now she knew the kiss was coming.   
  
She tried, but she couldn't feel him before it was dark, like the last time  
  
*****   
  
Zack, he looked so sad, standing over her, touching her face. Like he was alive, real, there over her body where she could feel other male hands on her, a friend's, a soulmates. But not his, not her brothers. Not the first man who ever really loved her.  
  
He was touching her, but she felt nothing. His hand slipped through her like air. He caressed her hair, moving the locks, but she never felt a thing. Wonderfully strong, bull headed eyes were sad, glistening.  
  
"I did what I had to do-" his voice was infinitely sadder then his eyes "Please don't hate me Maxie. You're my damn girl worth fighting for. Maxie-" a quiet, ghostlike sob broke on Zack's throat "I only loved one woman in my life." He turned away, a translucent hand wiping away phantom tears "I had to fight for you Max, you deserved to wake up again even if I can't ever see you again for real. Max-" this time ghostlike lips kissed her above her eyes, and he was gone, lost in her blackness.  
  
*****   
  
Alec is what brought her back. His voice, that "read me my love poetry 452" voice that enraged her all that time in her cell.  
  
Her eyes opened for real. He didn't kill her like she had thought. She was alive, painfully alive in a world that spit her out and left her to feel the brutality of her wounds.  
  
"Max.."   
  
Logan. The one she had come here for, he was saying her name this time. He was touching her, with relief, with shock, with wondrous feeling.  
  
Thump. Thump. Thump.  
  
He kissed her, she felt it this time. Warm, warmer, hot, wet, sweet, salty, everything she had missed. She had missed.  
  
She missed so much. She wanted to do this before, when he held her. She wanted to keep talking, keep feeling, keep being alive. She didn't want to close her eyes and just stop, the whole damn world going on forever and ever without her.   
  
Skin against skin and cotton of his shirt, it was bittersweet Nirvana. Why had so much time gone by? What would life had been like if she had lived her glorious dream before the reality of the nightmare she had faced became alive?  
  
Thump. Thump. Thump.  
  
His eyes were so blue, she remembered them. But they were harder now, sadder. Just like hers, like Zack.  
  
/Zack, I came home. I came back, where are you? Why aren't you here when it's good now?/  
  
"I'm sorry.." she didn't know what to say, "I love you Logan, I'm back, miss me" would've been ideal, better. But she was too shattered now to be ideal or smart assed.  
  
"You didn't do anything." Logan was the voice of reason, kissing her, comforting her, even though he didn't understand.  
  
Alec was the observer, watching, looking. Seeing his mission shot to hell, but didn't he just crawl out of hell? Why go back to salvage the pieces? He observed them as the outsider he was. The mission had changed, at least for today  
  
"I'm sorry.." she repeated the words, quietly like her mantra. Part of her world came back to her, she relished it. His warmth, feeling, raw emotions, she drank it in, absorbed all the love she missed because it was a thirst she couldn't complete anymore.   
  
*****   
  
SPACE NEEDLE  
THE NEXT NIGHT  
  
Thump. Thump. Thump.  
  
The wind blew through her hair as she sat there staring out over the broken world, still the same as she remembered it. Lights glowed down below, becoming away the darkness, acknowledging that people still existed in the brokenness.   
  
The Needle was the same way as she remembered it, cold, filthy, and high, a place to think, where the world couldn't screw her over because they couldn't reach her.  
  
The paper in her hand rustled.   
  
"You could just chuck that.." 494, she had christened him as Alec, so she started to think of him that way. He had followed her up here after she awoke that morning from her boyfriend's bed. Or he assumed he was her boyfriend. He certainly acted like it by the way he held her and brought her to his room to care for her physical exhaustion in a way that even the most experienced field doc could not perform because they lacked what fueled it.   
  
She slept almost the entire day, a merciful dreamless sleep, awaking only once at 8:30 the next night for the need to get out to walk around, to remind herself why she wanted to escape again back into this world.  
  
Alec didn't get a response from her, he didn't expect one either. "That the forgotten "love poetry?" he laughed despite himself to a woman he didn't even know. Breeding partners only required sex, no acknowledgement.   
  
"No" she said it in a way that growled at him to back off and expressed her dominance over her territory on the needle at the same time.  
  
"Fair enough" he agreed.  
  
"It's something about my brother." She gave him that much, not even looking at him.  
  
"Well then" he sat down, about a foot away from her "Go for it"  
  
She actually turned to face him then. Eyes' just like Ben's.."I don't want a pity fest Alec"  
  
"I'm not offering anything woman" Alec told her "All I said was go for it-"  
  
Max didn't say anything to that, looking down at her handwriting decorating the white paper. She took a moment before she read the words out loud. She wasn't a poet, this was just her.  
  
"Now I laid you down to sleep  
There was no God, just me you wanted to keep  
You died before I woke, fought a battle that I could not do alone  
This is for you my brother cause you never made it back home"  
  
*****  
  
END  
  
More Kleenex anyone? That was raw for me..the ending came from the end of the mini series "Mists of Avalon" where King Author's sister Morgane tearfully sees her dying brother home to where they grew up..The poem was from the kids prayer "Now I lay me down to sleep"  
  
The ending didn't get all M/L cause I wanted to address Max's sadness over loosing Zack too..I already did my M/L love fest reunion before. This was something else  
  
R/R please 


End file.
